


Incarnated Dawn

by Talontales



Series: Tale of the Nerevarine [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Adventure, Canon Divergent, Dialogue Heavy, Drama, F/F, Gen, Intrigue, Romance, TES III: Tribunal timeline, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talontales/pseuds/Talontales
Summary: Somehow, she thought she had escaped. For some unimaginably harebrained reason, Jollain had gotten it into her head that she was out. That she could so freely and willingly detach her body and soul from fate's whims and live her life the wayshewants, not dictated by kings or emperors or gods or goddamn daedra.What childish and gormless notion would've spurred such a simplistic belief?As Morrowind is in the midst of change and renewal in the final years of the Tribunal's power containment, a new-old shadow rises and seeks to sweep the land back into its proper hands. But though the renowned and revered Nerevarine would much prefer to sit this one out and go strong with her normal and flexible life, that's not how her story was ever meant to end.No hero lives in peace from deceit.
Relationships: Female Nerevarine/Original Female Dunmer Character(s)
Series: Tale of the Nerevarine [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972420
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. The calm before the night

**Author's Note:**

> **Main characters:** Jollain (Female Bosmer Nerevarine), Tayerise (Female Dunmer OC), Maak-Veh (Male Argonian OC), Vaziri (Female Khajiit OC), Imperator Asta Svalen (Female Nord OC), Praefect Delja Svalen (Female Dunmer-Nord OC)  
>  **Secondary characters:** Almalexia, King Hlaalu Helseth, Queen-Mother Barenziah, Sotha Sil
> 
> _Hi there, I'm Claire Talon_
> 
> _Welcome to the last part of my Nerevarine saga. Yes, this is the _final_ Jollain-centered fic (although she may appear again in other future ones...provided she survives)._   
>  _This is based on the Tribunal expansion, but I've morphed and made my own plot of it. This will not have the same progress or ending as in game. If you have read the previous two stories (and if you haven't, I'm surprised you're even here) you'll recognize the main players in this one. Mostly._
> 
> _And lastly, the[same blog post with profiles](https://creativebankruptcies.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-elder-scrolls-characters.html) I've linked in the previous two, should you wanna peek at those._

_Third era, year 430. Two years after the Battle of Red Mountain between the forces of the Nerevarine and House Dagoth. Three years prior to the Day of Toothed Gates._

Morning. The sea breeze, the flickering sunlight, the stirring of the leaves and the croaking of cliff darters get her a line on that this is the time of day, had she not suspected as such beforehand. It’s all of these elements in conjunction which renders the environment of this precise locale its trappings and existence. It’s how one discovers that this is Bal Foyen, or rather an island sited marginally to its northeast.

And if one surveys this setting, it would be painless for a traveler to conjecture that the inhabitants of this mound of earth are plain farmers, folks seeking a casual, uncomplicated life. And they would be free of error for the latter hunch, leastways.  
The two-storied curved stone domiciles perched into the ground at a spot hardly to the north of a portion which is cooped up by wooden fences and goodly patches of tillable soil can indeed be distinguished as farms, notwithstanding they’re such installations which customarily are dredged up in dunmer lands.

But the bosmer woman with a light brown exterior, curvy build, tattooed visage and sweeping copper hair in a ponytail working upon the fields, exchanging feed for a herd of guar, dusting off the equipment, and weeding through the qualities of their crops, has a storied history to her name, even if one that she would be in the business of repressing. And this wouldn’t be restricted to her own cerebrum either, for were she to have her way, the totality of Morrowind and conceivably Tamriel would overlook her accomplishments and leave her at that. She’s done being the hero and the coerced savior.

It’d be out of step with actuality to assert that she’s averse to contribute to the society that she’s lived in for the past four years, however. But without end, she was in pursuit of a life in the shadows and the untrodden alleys, not to be touted parallel to a succeeding celestial of this domain.  
There were actually those who called for her rise to godhood, be it openly in the streets or praying for it silently in their bedrooms. But she would not answer them, for what she craved was this – a life of her own, not a life for the people.

As she wipes her brow of sweat, rising to an erect position with her back, she peers out towards the landscape beyond the coastal line of her own – the ocean and the Inner Sea, north of Bal Foyen and south of Vvardenfell. The farm of hers and her precious wife is on a faintly raised hill, with a community of a few more buildings of its likeness. They are the peripheral growers in this neighborhood, and it was the bosmer who purchased these plots with gold earned by gifts after her feats in the name of the realm. With its altitude, for good measure, this signifies that they aren’t on thin ice as to the beating of the waves on the beaches, short of a veritable storm.

What they cultivate in their fertile soil comes down to the preferred plantings of the eastern province – saltrice, marshmerrow, ash yam and additional herbs, vegetables and crops which are pertinent in the feather of area which they’ve solidified themselves in.  
On the flip side, by means of her submission, they’ve likewise invested in fruits which she harbored prospects of being lucrative for marketing to the wider Empire, in addition to a bevy of netches for the jelly they aggregate and a pack of nix hounds. Under the hardships of their journey across Vvardenfell, she had gotten a handle on numerous ashlanders, and bandits to spare, which avidly employed these idiosyncratic wolf-like insect carnivores for manifold measures. Albeit for the bosmer’s aspirations, merely their expertise at overseeing a post when domesticated suited her.

The labors of croplands are not graceful or hugely merciful amid planting and harvest seasons, but this is generally interchanged with months of relaxation and repose in the medial months. The bosmer was thrown by the discovery of this manner of downtime, it’s fair to say, but she never declines when provided the chance. She might’ve accepted the inconvenience of this lifestyle, but she didn’t affirm she’d cease to indulge in other pleasures.

At the same time, she would be ascribing false markers should she state that getting up in the morning hours and glimpsing the delighted animals doesn’t perk her up too. Expressly the guar and their oversized maws shaped comparable to a joyous smile, regardless of that the former hero isn’t doubtless whether this is how their mouths respond.  
What she is perceptive of, by contrast, is that this fills her chest with an appetite for another example of happiness from a further minute creature that she can bring up. But she and her wife haven’t made up their minds on this scene in their lives. For elves, they’re yet in a manner of springtime.

Primarily, she was on the fence in so far as the preconception of killing guar was on the table, though. It’s not like she rates herself as a veggie-eater solely – and her bosmer parents (or parent, who can say?) and ancestors would reasonably be ultra cross if she did – but she had never in the runup to this role even digested the perception of slaying the lovable little lizards with her own hands. And whilst she has now had that ordeal beyond the edges of this career, her worries were quite abated by learning that, although farmers every so often put down some guar for meat, what is the customary is to preserve them as protractedly as is appropriate.  
This is largely beholden to an alternate asset of theirs – the hides. Whereas some dissimilar provinces may harvest hides from bovine beasts coming off the back of their passing, the citizens of Morrowind has the substitute of gaining scraps of leather from the guar molting their skins. Old as it is, single or multiple stacked-up loosed hides of a guar can be reworked, bolstered and layered to stitch together a respectably steady and stable leather piece, for armor, furniture and whatnot. The same goes for a butchered guar, naturally, but thanks to the reptiles’ constitution and bodily functions, it is not a condition – something which the bosmer is pleased by.

Once she’s stocked the feeders with provisions, watching the two dozen or so guar that they’ve got on their farm come their way to her and receive a couple of pats, she by and by catches footsteps on the dirt passage in her vicinity, and then a cadence that is well-known to her.  
“Jollain! No whining this morning from ‘em? Must be in good spirits, then.”

Jollain - the renowned Nerevarine, elevated Hortator, redeemer of Vvardenfell, conqueror of House Dagoth, champion of Azura, Dragonborn by prophecy, descendant of legends – dusts off her begrimed hands alongside her job trousers, blinks and jiggles her ears with fixation, for the tone and origin is one that melts her heart. She spins and then smiles widely at her wife, the taller and bulkier grey-skinned and black-haired dunmer Tayerise, the woman who bested Orvas Dren of Camonna Tong. Although the battlefield has for the foregoing two years been a far-flung memory, as she has hung up the greatsword she won to pick up the hoe, sickle and shovel.

Jollain’s face illuminates, her arms stretching to envelop Tay’s waist and the dunmer knits with her, by bending downwards and sliding her mitts to the bosmer’s upper back. In a central position of the two, their lips interlock, their noses nuzzling and Jollain squeezes her arms surrounding the midriff of her better half, feeling inclined to have her close. Instantly that the making out session depletes, their noses are steady by one another, the bosmer’s fingers slinking underneath Tay’s brown shirt, to knead her muscles. Granting that Jollain is roughly in the equivalent generous shape she had previously, Tay is along those lines too – she likes to keep fit, and though she sustains a decent exercising regime, it doesn’t go amiss that she lifts heavier objects or animals, sows the soil or walks throughout the farm all day long.

“Tsk. With me, cutie? You know they wouldn’t. Ain’t a guar anywhere who I can’t charm.”

“Hmm. Perhaps. Haven’t figured out if you’re cheating yet.”

“Hah! When would I have the time for that?”

“At some point working for that imperial of yours.”

“Pfff. You got illusions that Caius gave two squat for farm animals? You’re a real dumdum then, honey.”

Their marginal bickering is soon interrupted by the grunting of said animal, but not from behind the bosmer. In lieu of the ranch variety, a hulky black one comes hopping forward by the road at Tay’s heels, and calls giddily for Jollain. She grins in response.  
“What did I tell ya? Amnet, my cute lil’ boy. Excited today, are we? C’mere!”

She kneels down and as she does, she therefore invites him to press his nose into her mug and lick it fervently. Ulterior to it, Jollain dips a hand into her pockets and fishes out a piece of dried fruit for him.  
“Want a snack, boy?”

The guar’s eyes dilate, and he fixates upon it, with Tay smiling and exhaling just at the moment that he gets it in his gob.  
“Spoiling him again?”

“Ah, he deserves it. Chased off that ‘darter the other day, didn’t he?”

“I believe you already rewarded him for this…”

“Bah, who’s keeping count?”

Regaining her feet, Jollain spies then to the north of their farm, where another fenced-in square stands, and in the morning sunlight she can pick out the chubbier presence of Uryne, the stocky black-haired with a number of greys, dark grey-hued, thick-armed and thick-legged mother of Tay, who is at present out and nourishing her own guar. They flock to her with an eagerness burning bright, as if complimenting her for breakfast and thereafter dig into their serving. Guar do eat everything, so they’re not picky with what’s catered.

The older woman comes about, spots the pair a distance away, and erects one of her arms to wave and the twosome sends the message back. She’d come over, but she has more jobs to fulfill prior to the lapse of the morning.  
But it’s clear as bell that she’s not alone in her labor, for her husband, Falsabit, is on track to be deep in his own busywork within the pair’s house nearby. For a fact, Falsabit was named the official top leatherworker of the region just last year, and has been cooperating diligently with his colleagues on the mainland. Customers have been swooping in too, even from Black Marsh, though it’s hard to believe. With a multitude of argonians residing in Bal Foyen, they sometimes make the journey and trade with their brethren in the south, and some of the local leaders were impressed by the high-quality craftsmanship and sought to offer him a compact. He was flabbergasted by the enthusiasm, but wasn’t going to throw it in their faces. He made the arrangement, with a little help from his daughter-in-law. And onwards from that day, he’s identified that argonians may be no less than the most honest and charitable merchants he’s dealt with on any occasion. It does come off as a great marvel from the man who was supremely anti-outlander all but a couple of years past. Jollain isn’t shy to proclaim that he’s evolved as a person.

About this time of the early hours, Jollain and Tay are driven somewhat to the south, glancing at the road that trails to the third housing in this district, albeit one that is devoid of cropland, for it is quartered by one who possesses a disparate breed of profession. And they then absorb the sound of his voice too, introducing himself.  
“G’morning, you two!”, Areval utters gladly, accompanied by the gesturing of his hand.

They motion right back at him, lips sloped in gladness.  
“Morning, Arry”, calls Jollain.  
Weird as it may be to entertain it these days, whenever Jollain dared to put that nickname amongst her lips a couple of years prior, Areval would deplore it, view the use as a measure of taunt. As matters stand, however, he’s as fond of the application as though his sister herself vented it.  
“Heading on duty, are ya?”

“Heh, yeah. Got a report to log and I reckon Okeelah is gonna ask for a hand with the northern banks.”

“Your boss?”

“That’s right. You saw her on the feast two months back, right?”

Jollain kicks distractedly at the soil, her hands near her hips.  
“Hmm, ‘suppose I did. I don’t-…  
Hold up, was she the lady with bantam guar pet?”

Areval chuckles and fuses his arms along his chest.  
“Yep, ‘Eats-too-much’. She brings him everywhere. Can’t tell ya why, but she’s treasures the little guy. Doesn’t hurt anyone, I guess.”

It isn’t simply Falsabit who has gotten entrenched among the local population, for Areval moreover has taken up business on the mainland, a setting that he travels to every morning by boat. This is a feature conducted in sync with another person, a woman who comes sprinting behind him.  
“Wait for me!”, they catch out of a long-haired miss. It’s a dunmer, faintly lighter shade of grey-blue than the siblings, her strands black and eyes orange-red. She’s clothed in a getup which is relative to Areval’s, a medley of metal and cloth, for they do as it turns out work for the identical institution – the townsguard bang to the west.

Jollain smiles at this lady besides.  
“And mornin’ to you as well, Sovali.”

This woman grins at the bosmer and catches her breath. She’s a pretty sight, in a roughneck sort of way. Jollain has ever been fond of that with her.  
“Hah, sure, it would be, if only this right s'wit could let me keep up!”, she clamors and then jokingly punches Areval’s shoulder.

He does nothing but snigger.  
“You were snailing.”

“I had to put the hairband on!”, she objects and gesticulates at her tresses in a subsided ponytail. Still and all, Areval’s individual setup isn’t terribly shorter.

“Suppose you could’ve done that en route to the boat.”

“Tsk. You just didn’t feel like waiting, right? Pining for additional minutes with these two, weren’t ya?” She grins knowingly.

“…was that what I said? Can’t accuse me.”

“Ahh, break it off. I got a handle on ye by now”, she tells him and locks a kiss onto his cheek.

It’s nearly a year on from the day that these two got hooked up. Jollain puzzled out in the early days that Sovali was an approximation of Areval’s ex-occupation, but for making a living as a bandit. It was the argonian overhead of the guard, Okeelah, who persuaded her to conduct a paradigm shift.  
In this operation, they routinely strive to certify that the whole kit and caboodle of the region runs smooth, which tends to be a chill task, but sometimes tempers flare. And theirs did at that for a little while – Sovali and Areval clashed for the first time almost instantaneously, where they bickered and competed, up ‘til Sovali got the measure of him, that he wasn’t an opportunist in short, but a man who meant to prescribe himself as someone that had the deepest urging to fend for his community. Shortly thereafter, a week or such, Sovali asked him out. Six months down the line, she moved in with him. And as follows, it’s unlikely he will in any way attempt to migrate again, with a fresh life gradually building.

Tay smirks at Sovali.  
“Call me in case he recurrently acts like that. I’ll dispatch Amnet at him.”

His girlfriend now giggles, whilst he sighs.  
“Come now, Tay…you ought to get wise that he adores me.”

“Not measured up to me, dear Arry.”

Later, with some laughing administered and tied towards one or the other, Areval then wholeheartedly demonstrates a portion of his protectiveness that has blossomed in his chest for his sister’s spouse.  
“Oh yeah, in other news – I was warned by Pimali-Nino that they’d sighted movement imminent to the coast last night.”

Pimali-Nino is what one of their neighbors goes by. They’ve got three correlative houses of this tract, where two are retained by argonians and one by a dunmer family. And equivalently, it was Pimali which Jollain acquired the turfs from. As time floated by, these moderate abodes have thereupon found themselves inducing a perfectly good rapport.  
“What order of movement?”, wonders Tay.

“They phrased it as a brisk and stealthy creature, liable to be an animal, potentially a predator. It was stalking the outer line of the farms. You two were safe, though, right? You weren’t at the mercy of it, were you?”

“A predator?”, wonders Jollain with evident discomfiture in her voice. “Uh, not the least bit. Haven’t seen a damn. Saying that, our home ain’t by the shoreline at any rate, so we’d fail to, even had it chosen to walk near.  
But let’s say it got the urge to trot cheek by jowl to our lil’ crib – what’s the big deal? Tay and I’ve culled bigger bodies than any whatsoever this isle got to throw at us. And then there’s Amnet.”

Areval is observably gutted with this reply, but he refrains from contending with her proposal.  
“That’s…likely a fair point. I’ll ask about town, I imagine. Bound to land something of clue.  
Anyhow, stay alert out there.”

“Not to worry, Arry”, his elder sister responds. “Your warning has been heard.”

Jollain inclines her head in accord.  
“Yeah, don’t sweat it over us, pal. Their best shot won’t cut it.  
Oh yeah, apropos of work – you earning that promotion we discussed on the big dinner last week?”

But the faintly younger man depicts a face of mild tentativeness.  
“Eh, haven’t been up to the asking. Such concerns are eased into, and won’t come around straight away. And I don’t wish to impose unwarrantedly against argonians, as a dunmer. In the end, the chief batch of denizens here are.”

“And the wedding?”, posits Tay.

This catches her brother flat-footed, and he blenches.  
“Wh-…what wedding?”

“Tsk, go figure. Yours!”

“I-…we-…we haven’t chatted about any wedding!”

“Me and Jollain secured one last year. Isn’t it on schedule for you to arrange one into the bargain now?”

In tune with this, Sovali grins, sets a hand upon his right shoulder and levels her chin by his left.  
“Mmm, isn’t it?”, she teases.

It’s not a fairly out-of-the-way point for Areval to be a little taken aback, but he doesn’t conventionally get abashed. Such as he is now, that is, scraping his neck.  
“Well…we uh…”

That’s when Sovali cracks up and encases his waist in her arms, hugging him close and steering him into a gentle kiss.  
“A reasonable talk for us to carry out alone at home in the future?”

Areval is appreciative of her understanding, smiling with a speckle of shyness, nudging his nose onto hers.  
“…yeah, w-we erm…should get to work.”

With Jollain and Tay supremely smug, they wish the pair a good day, and then drift back towards their own toils.  
Jollain halts for a touch, to line her sight upon the sunrise, the brilliant ocean of red luminosity that bleeds throughout the heavens, and senses the stillness of entity within this very moment. It’s what she had in demand in the midst of the torment that was the Nerevarine prophecy, and she gets the vibe of…relief which the world had in store for her. She glimmers, satisfied regarding this gift.

With this, she resumes her goals for the morning…wholly oblivious to the darkness that mars the fringe of the horizon.


	2. Red hand

_Amid a bed of coarseness and razed dreams, under a roof of black waves and broken hearts, near a foot of grungy pillars and impaled faith, upon splintered hide and guileful palm…she awakens._   
_Groaning to herself, Jollain bores her fingers into whatever uneven and eminently disturbing venue she’s fallen onto. Did she drop off the bed or how come she experiences such stiffness prickling against her body?_

_Levelling her hands down to the ground and heaving herself to a sitting stance, she unlids her eyes and bears witness to illustration that clogs her up with terror._   
_Although she could’ve sworn that she went to bed with her wife last night and logically is assuredly yet in this locale, she finds herself in a landscape unequivocally unlike their bedroom. By some means, Jollain wouldn’t be far off from profiling the picture which her eyes paint as suggestive of a woe of bygone days. She’s trapped in a realm of gloom and dusk from top to bottom, as if indeed the shadows are what makes up the mists and not the organic smoke. The air hangs heavy, but though Jollain is liable to originally chalk this up to the temperature of the area, in mere seconds she gains the wisdom of that it’s not devilishly hot here. Upon reflection, she can detect the raw hide of a nip in the air. Well, it’s certainly not winter inside Bal Foyen, and she can’t place any journey she’s made up north in the past week. Or year. Or…ever. So, a dream then._   
_…but a singularly lucid one._

_The case is closed on the concern whether it’s the lake she so well knows, for all her senses - from hearing down to her touch - are able to cross-check that what she’s plopped down upon is stern and undaunted soil. Or, more credibly, stone. Her ears attend to the crunching miniature pebbles, the rasping of her boots, the scraggly top of-_   
_Hold it. Boots? When did she receive the recourse to deck herself out with those? And beyond this, she observes and perceives how she’s clad in an array of hardware that she’s not harnessed since…_

_She twists her head, divorcing her intellect from these impressions. No, she’s_ not _recommencing that passage in her life and she won’t. Not again. She showed her back to it by design. This gloaming, though, she’s hands down in a position to retrace it, for it rivals that which Jollain in now-gone years treaded through. Exclusive of that…_  
 _No, this haze is not alike to that idiomatic personage’s realm. It does not hearten to her hide, to her shape. The night of twilight would brush next to Jollain in line with newly-washed and velvety sheets, loving and comforting. But this blackness pushes a sensation of hissing, gnawing at her. It keeps a predator’s stare fixated on her neck, poised to drill its fangs into her luscious veins. Has something befallen Azura’s realm? Or is this not hers whatsoever?_

_Agitation and fright eats at her, and she feels somewhat fainthearted, not having lived this defunct nightmare onward from the closing of Dagoth Ur’s pulse._   
_Going forward, she has to expire earlier ideas and judgments, for she reads an offbeat tinkling bluster by her tail, along the lines of metal thudding gingerly into metal. Like the tapping of a gong, but appreciably quieter. Shifting to the path behind her, Jollain notices mobility in the mists; feet shuffling, cloth wavering, arms dangling. A person looms large, dressed in a hood combined with dark robes, carrying an item in their hands._

_Jollain is colored by her emotions, stretching her eyes in dismay._   
_“No…not you! No, this can’t be…we…we were done! You said it was over! Finished! Kaput, godsdammit! You can’t bring me back in! It’s not right! This isn’t how we-“_

_But after this outbreak, she snatches a closer peek, and it comes to her that this isn’t one who serves the same look of the lady of twilight. Quite right, for this one’s eyes are of a brighter red, their shell a lighter grey. Plus, what they grapple is not the moon and star objects, but what materializes in the form of…a slightly arched blade? What was it they called those on the black market? Katana? Some stripe of akaviri-forged weapon._

_Stepping into the light, a chill licks down Jollain’s spine and she swallows – a vicious grin holding a few fangs and a pungent glint to the irises._   
_“Who…who are you?” The bosmer catches the apparent unnerved feelings in her pitch and it mortifies her a bit._

_The tone that retorts echoes with a higher modulation, fused with a lower. Two sentiments in one. Two beings in one. And from within, Jollain gets to undergo a quaking that she can’t untangle._   
_“Is a prophecy ever complete, when it has not yet chimed the bells of **damnation**?”_   
_Thereafter, the person hoists the blade and shoves it summarily into the earth with both hands. The stone cracks, scattering chinks and recesses forward, in a direction to Jollain. Faraway, the bosmer makes out an agonized scream and the earsplitting break of metal._   
_“Let the sunder be cast! Bring in the fall of towers unshaken!_   
_Show me your resolve at the end of an era’s decadence, **Incarnate**.”  
  
_

* * *

  
Jollain awakens in a cold sweat, sucking in air and bursting herself up to a sitting angle. Soaked strands of copper hair lathers her forehead, gaze and nose, droplets of perspiration flows to her ample heaving chest, palpitating fingers and nails cut at the sheets and her sight darts along the umbra that is before her, albeit attuning to it in scant seconds.

Well, that was most assuredly an…eye-opening incident. For two years running, Jollain hasn’t been subject to awful and palpable dreams like so, ones that sting at the depths of your throat. This isn’t to be confused with the conceit that what Jollain caught a glimpse of was in some way distasteful or bone-chilling. No, this wasn’t in any way, shape or form like peas in a pod with the crucibles which Dagoth put her through, nor the fever dreams of Corprus. Having announced this, there was an…eerily evocative profundity to it all. It felt real, which shouldn’t be. This was simply a dream. A fiercely trippy and unnatural one, but no less of a-

Her account on the matter is stalled by an aberrant kerfuffle which issues from the outside – it’s put down by her as light squealing of the guar, kinda indistinguishable from how they call whensoever they get spooked. What would’ve spurred such behavior? She’s lying to herself assuming she has illusions of them sharing in her nightly wanderings, ri-  
Oh, no, hold your horses. What was it Areval debriefed them on, two days ago? Some ilk of predator was stalking the beaches of the island, wasn’t it? Dang it. Maybe it’s gotten bold and gained notions of assembling a snack out of their little friends. Guar aren’t stumpy beasts or anything, but they’re pretty docile and walkover prey, save when they’re trained. Nope, can’t have that.

Jollain hops to her feet down the floor abutting the bed and goes on her tiptoes in the direction of the nightstand beside the curb of it, perched on the left. She withdraws a housecoat that she invests on herself.  
Perceiving the creaking of the bed, she heeds it and flushes her mind to the mindfulness of her wife. Tayerise is sprawled across her side, one border of her side-buzzcut head buried over the pillow, and the quilt erratically circumfusing her physique, albeit with one arm dug below the pillow and the other poking out, over to the now deserted pocket of Jollain’s place. It would be relatively bizarre for someone whose solitary knowledge of Tay is from her old self to visualize a scene where the dunmer wouldn’t have been reflexively triggered to stir via Jollain’s own awakening, but this would be turning a blind eye to the development of the preceding two years. Held in these lands of Bal Foyen, occupying a lazy ranch, out of bounds from wider society and nary a mote of meeting peril, not counting the on-again-off-again run-in with some minor animal who might take a shot at their guar herd or crops, Tay has been induced with a sense of pervasive serenity. She does exercise habitually and periodically spars with her brother, but she is on the verge of having unlearned what it entails to live with alarm clasping your heart.

To which end, Jollain doesn’t fancy fussing her, puts some socks on and weasels through the room and down the stairs to the ground floor in private, to investigate the hoo-ha. With the consequent beating of her heart, given that unprecedented dream, she wants some fresh air anyhow.  
In silence and self-enclosed, Jollain strides on facing the door and rolls out clean of a lantern or torch or anything else. To her, it’s not a bottom line, for she not solely houses a value of night vision, but she is naturally attuned to the hours post-sundown. Born under the Shadow, sanctified by the Queen of the Night Sky, it is as though a second home. Under her trip to the door, she instinctively accustoms her senses to the dark.

Flying from the nest, she spies apart of her situation, aligning it to the pens where the guar are and she makes for it wearing nothing but the coat and some slippers. Independent of her implicit predecessors of Valenwood, she doesn’t have a huge palate for withstanding the grass and dirt between her toes.  
In either event, instantly being a burst of meters beyond the gate to the fence, roughly five meters outside the door, her stroll ends. She doesn’t rightly comprehend her own intent for putting this into practice, but by some inexplicable premonition, she anticipates that it’s proper. It’s as if a voice in the back of her mind whispers to her that there’s something amiss.

The bosmer bides here, washing her mind clean to determine the damn genesis of it. What is she stalling on this spot for? The beast is stalking the perimeter somewhere, isn’t it? If she’s overly sluggish, they may lose a guar, or more. Shake yourself out of it, Jollain. One bad little backdrop sensibility oughta not get you so unhinged. No chance, she gotta press on.  
But the moment she corporally agitates her head, she is startled by a ruckus – a scream of pain.

Shivering in her astonishment, Jollain wheels around and without a missing a beat, scours the one window they have along this side of the house, looking at how her now undoubtedly broad-awake wife is there on her feet. But this isn’t a mutual staring, for the fact that Tay is caught in a desperate action to dodge a black-clad figure menacing her. With dual daggers in their hands, they launch themselves upon the dunmer, having already cut a gash into her left arm.  
“What the-…Tay!”

With Jollain still out front, she would be persuaded to push herself inside to bail her wife out…but then her instincts strike again, in this sequence as good as clasping her legs. _Listen_ , they tell her. Use those big ears of yours and take account of your surroundings.  
Although her head is flooded with hysteria for Tay’s fate, the bosmer does as she’s self-informed and pauses…and there, to her right. She catches the subtle rustling of the grass to the right of the house. Her face snaps to this angle, her lenses falling on a few boxes with materials stacked up, and beside them, a bow-and-arrow utilizing foe, similarly adorned in the color of the night.

Jollain doesn’t know how the hell she could pick that up, but it’s a nonissue for the time being. This assassin has loaded an arrow and draws it back, but here, for all of a moment, time can be believed to slow down. The bosmer collects this interval to survey her assailant, struggling to put a name or marker on them, but the clothes have no organic identification, and the individual is quite slim, but nothing stands out.

Well, granting that they deduce her as some form of handy prey to get a quick drake for, they’ll have to go home gravely disappointed. Or more possible, to their grave.  
For the first occasion in two years, Jollain activates an interior mechanism, an inherent caliber with which to defend herself, that she hasn’t let step to the fore since the days of drifting through Vvardenfell. But now…now she needs the gift that her ancestors bestowed her.

Lightning spurts from her left hand and in a jiffy, swathes her arm, then her legs and across her chest to her neck. It all but strikes in a moment’s notice, and in its blast, illuminates the grey-moon-and-black-star facial tattoo. In the shine of the night, one can be forgiven for thinking the eyes of a daedra lord blistered in them and the assassin is so bamboozled by the illusion of something staking their soul that they falter.

An arrow is loosed, but with the storm practically radiating her eyes, Jollain takes a left, showing her flank to the instigator and smoothly permits the projectile to fly past her.  
With their defenses open as a door, Jollain gives the lightning span to cover her body with appended layers, ladening her as a second mass of skin, howbeit way more fatal. Jollain hasn’t had cause to kill anyone in the resulting years of her exit from Vvardenfell, and had she gotten her way, she would’ve lived out every bit of the process never touching one more person. But if it’s self-defense they condition of her, then she won’t hold back, give no one a sole bite of quarter.

And so, with a tingle at her fingers, the ill-natured howl of the lightning grips her senses and tissue, letting it filter through her and once she pitches her arm ahead, a stream of it lunges at her attacker, swallowing them inside a wave of apocalypse, bursting them forth an estimated fifteen meters, as indeed being catapulted by a tidal surge and finally crashing into a shed and dropping stone-cold dead to the earth.

Ditching this person from her concentration for a few seconds, Jollain fixes on the window and spectates the brawl which is advancing within the walls of the house. The dual-dagger fighter is indisputably a talented person, but he’s got some clear flaws – and Jollain tags this as a guy, reposed on that Tay has triumphed in ripping off his mask, where they can glimpse a bearded fair-skinned person, shorter than the dunmer, potentially a breton.

Tay provides grievous opposition and at one point while he slams a table at her - which she dodges - and pushes his luck to take advantage of it to vault into her, she catches him midair with a punch to his belly that makes him lose his breath, smashes him into the wall, plows one of the arms against it along with his body and then gradually twists the appendage. In seconds, Jollain gets an earful of what she would surmise is a cry of agony and the breaking of bones. He makes a last-ditch bid to cut her arm with the second blade, but she headbutts him, then tosses him aside, hauls up the lost dagger of his, and spins about to drill it headlong down his chest.

Jollain has it in the works to rush right into the house to back her up, but once more her reignited combat intuition keeps her posted that this was not the final foe. Tossing her gaze up, she is right on time for a third foe, with a broadsword in their two paws, leaping down from the roof in a go at stabbing her into the ground.  
But this doesn’t bode terribly well for them, for Jollain is by this time inundated in lightning, and with them flying at her like a steak due for the campfire, she launches a burst of it that strikes their chest. They’re thrusted with such power that they rise even higher into the sky, overwhelmed by a tidewave of electricity which roars through the night. At the second it subsides, five unabbreviated seconds pass, until they crash land to the soil, all crispy and smoking.

With the depressurization, the lightning too tones down and dissipates. Jollain remains there above the burnt body, a tad shell-shocked, her head thrumming. She was so sure, so lost in her frame of mind that it was done. That the world had at long last begun to forget her…but tonight has opened her eyes to that it won’t mind its own business.

With a half-naked Tay coming half-jogging to Jollain, panicked and bleeding across her arm, she pants as she stares at the bosmer.  
“J…Jollain! A-are you…are you alright?”

Jollain doesn’t respond. Or maybe she doesn’t even heed her, too entranced by the dead body. She kicks it over, to its back, and kneels down. She wrests the blade from the hand that’s locked to it in a death grip and then cuts open the burnt leather.  
“Who the fuck are you?”, she whispers quietly.

Beneath, she finds the hide of what appears to be a brown and white-furred khajiit, apart from some belongings. One factor that catches her attention is a mildly scalded note, furled and sheltered in an inner pocket. She arrogates it, rolls it open and looks at what it’s composed of.  
“W…what…what does it say?”, asks Tay, but Jollain again has no words.

In lieu of a spoken comeback, she shifts the note around, whereupon Tay encounters a lone symbol – an open and unmitigatedly black hand.  
Externally, it does look like the ‘beast’ their neighbors were keyed up about was far further clever. And with an added bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For reference, and if it wasn't obvious,[this](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/1/1a/BlackHand.svg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20120423021059) was the hand symbol in question :p_


	3. To the old fold

_It had revisited their lair to slap them square across the face, fate’s cruel hand. The sting of yore, the pre-elected starfall of the heavens’ peace. It was never set out to linger._  
_Once the assault had subsided, Areval and Sovali had arrived, noting the commotion and destruction from afar in the night. They had then welcomed the two to their home and nursed them to the best of their abilities. Their shock was in the flavor of Tay’s and Jollain’s own._

_The two guards then undertook an initial investigation of the attackers, but Jollain hadn’t asked for a full report on what it intimated, or who they were. Well, she couldn’t speculate as concerns the hand logo upon the letter or what it stood for, but she knew assassins when she beheld them. She had some brushes with their ilk within the underworld of the Imperial City, for they voluntarily roam through the poor’s districts, where no one prevents them. And thereafter is the fact that she’s friends with one, who resides on Vvardenfell, an ally which she communicates with these days solely via written messages and letters. But now, perchance, it is due to replenish that relationship._

_But first, she and her wife were cognizant of that this emergency would not simply govern their lives, but perceivably their family’s as well, something they couldn’t permit. The farm had ascended into a safe haven, a place they could trust and build on. But this inimical maneuver has displayed that neither would survive in quiet and being secluded, not in the middle of one helluva dagger to their throats. It’s urgent that they pull out again, become entities in society. To the conclusion of this debacle, in all cases._

_At first, they had joined Areval and Sovali to seek his and Tay’s parents’ house, where Uryne had prepared a dinner, and Falsabit sat musing in dark thoughts. Tay’s bandages were here redone, as Jollain had started in the culmination of the smackdown, but Sovali fixed them._  
_With the story told, Areval had protested, that they shouldn’t go off unaided. He doubtlessly fancied joining them, but it was an exercise in futility to cross it. Tay and Jollain had made up their minds. Uryne had broken into sorrow and fright, but not for herself – for her daughter and daughter-in-law, two of the people most paramount to her existence. She couldn’t bear losing either. Sovali was primarily bewildered and Falsabit did not foil them, in this truth governed by fate._

_Rather, he told them something else._  
_“You can’t leave…not with the brand of arsenal you have on you.”_  
_He had then collected his cane, limping up with his wooden leg into his office, gesturing for them to keep stride with him. There, they had glimpsed two sets of gear – one black and grey leather and cloth for Jollain, and some metal components for Tay._  
_“This misery was a result in the making for me, that the ills out there wouldn’t leave us be. Thus, I saw fit to be prepared. For the past year I’ve hammered away, if our lifestyle would come to the worst.”_

_The kit he presented to Jollain consisted of a jacket as a top which could be buttoned, boots internally sheeted with metal coverages for the toes and heels, which surely can be resorted to as a weapon at that. All the better were the thin metal plates overspreading the knees, elbows, knuckles and shoulders, for the crux of parrying. Won’t secure her if she tries to shoulder the burden of a massive greataxe, but sufficient where her magic can’t cut it._

_Jollain had then examined the arms, noting the ensigns sewn into them – at the left arm was a silver moon and gold star, and to the right, a scarlet piece which she could peg as an identity she was knowledgeable of going back a couple of years._  
_“Is this…?”_

_“The mark of the Ahemmusa, yes. We dwell with the tribe no more, haven’t in the last several decades…but we will ever be Ahemmusa. And by marrying my daughter, you are one of us.”_

_Jollain had smiled dazzlingly, embracing her father-in-law, and he balanced it with his own arms._  
_“It’s…hard to say how thankful I am that you care.”_  
_Later, Jollain had for good measure strapped her old guar symbol from the other gear on, as a memento._

_Falsabit himself cycled beside his daughter._  
_“My talents wouldn’t hold up to the proviso of a mainly metal-sculpted equipment, meaning I had to send a letter to Kitze-Lum, the argonian blacksmith two towns down the road to the west. Bridging our respective flaws, we forged this.”_

_And Tay set her eye on an accumulation of pieces which intermixed formidably honed metal panels with cloth and leather for the extremities and as lower reinforcements. It wasn’t a flashy clutch, but tough in a big way and more durable than she’s ever known. Well-made, plane and rounded in multiple positions, much less bumpy than her last._  
_Tay had magnified her gaze and swept the compound in astonishment._  
_“Is this…ebony?”_

_Her father’s face had glimmered proudly._  
_"Didn’t escape ya, did it? You’re right, it sure is. Pulled in a favor from…imperial once-contacts of yours. After hearing who it was for, they supported it and lent us the substances required. Even discharged an enchanter to spruce it up with some simplified incantations – this goes for Jollain’s pieces too. And now it ought to rival that oversized blade of yours.”_

_Tay had similarly brightened and grasped her father with both arms._  
_“I will treasure it.”_

_Uryne had slipped into this hug party with her daughter and daughter-in-law. She had told them that the guar would be in her charge during their absence, which they were grateful for._  
_Sovali had hooked Areval’s hand, around the moment where he was making an admission._  
_“I had a mind to pursue you in this, but…I see that my blade must be here. So…yeah. May the Good Daedra speed you on your way. And…if you’re ever in trouble, call me. For anything.”  
  
_

* * *

  
In the ensuing days, they had retreated from the relative safety of Bal Foyen, hired a boat and sailor off a port to the north, who favored them with keeping some anonymity. Their faces aren’t prestigious across the integral land, but Jollain’s mark is and if they garner attention, they could turn into handy targets for the sparse assassins that may linger.

To make the trip, Jollain had brought with her a miscellany of items out of their house – the earring afforded to her by House Hlaalu, the Indoril badge she once wore, the scarf crafted by House Telvanni etc. She isn’t drabbed in the bulk of these, however, as she’s simply stuffed them into her backpack. Should another home-invader search for them and spot none of the artifacts within, this promises a chance that they won’t dwell or hurt anyone. It’s better to hold your enemy on edge.  
The one contrast to this strategy are the weapons which she wielded at that era – strapped to her latest belt is one steel sword and the malachite sword the Talon of Malcarem upon the inverse perimeter, the contribution from House Redoran.

Drifting into Vvardenfell and making landfall in Hla Oad, a fishing village by the western coast and a port which onetime had to suffer a skirmish between the Legion and Camonna Tong, they ask around and shortly root out the news that the island is in a state of disorder. Behind the fall of Dagoth, the sundering of the Tribunal was to come. Much as they haven’t been dismantled through and through, their political and magical strengths are bordering on depleted and a revision was fated for all involved. The people up until this period hadn’t chosen what path to walk and who they could turn to for leadership was lost on them, not with the Tribunal robbed of trustworthiness and with the Nerevarine vanished. Jollain did get a pang of guilt hearing that, close to the sensation of having deserted them. The Warrior-Poet Vivec had according to the tales not showed them the way, for a scatter of months consecutive to the trumping of Dagoth Ur, his abrupt and undocumented evanescence was reported. He has yet to show his face once more, and no one has dared to suspect his whereabouts.

At the break of the discussions, the Temple in conjunction with the Dissident Priests took point en route to a sense of order, but there was plenteous quarreling, distinctly with the Ordinators itching to preserve their command for a mass of regions. The Dissident Priests differed, claiming that this era of rebirth prescribed a fresh and untried solution. There was thusly a rigorous conflict, skirting the threat of war.

What absolutely _didn’t_ upgrade the matter was that the Empire rocked up to ‘assist’ the Dissidents, swearing to provide for them so that they could solidify their law, regardless of the consequences. Obviously, more harm than good came of this, and the hints of a political firestorm was rising. No less than three humongous brawls irrupted among not simply the Legion and the Ordinators, but House Redoran who jumped in to play.  
To amend this misadventure, there was no other recourse than for the Imperator to resign. Mercifully, the replacement had been passably clever to rectify these botches, ordering the Legion to revoke their earlier stakes and stick to offering Vvardenfell reinforcement where it _asked_ , and disavow demands or threats.

And though it couldn’t be denied that this dismayed them, Tay and Jollain does not hold this as their cardinal objective of this layover, as their time is reserved for a duo that they used to mix with for two years, and ones they’ve corresponded with from the day they departed and forward. But mails aside, one shouldn’t flip the scenario on its head and suppose that they haven’t met face to face – both Maak-Veh, the Spymaster of the Blades of Vvardenfell in the last two and a half years, and Vaziri, the Mouth of Telvanni councilor Arara Uvulas, have journeyed to Bal Foyen now and again, to dine and drink and chat about everything between the heavens and earth. Jollain had politely requested that the two never pile unnecessary amounts of their bothers onto her and her wife nevertheless, and the Vvardenfell locals held faithful to it, not wishing to exact fears towards two ladies who’ve sacrificed so much. Consequently, the general news have been sparse, which is the premise for how the provincial tidings hadn’t reached them.

Voyaging east through the borrowing of a wagon and a guar mount for Jollain, with Tay sitting astride Amnet, they pull in at the outskirts of their old home city, Balmora, one of the most sizable kept in Vvardenfell and the seat of power of House Hlaalu.  
But predictably, they don’t fundamentally pierce the city, for their axis is a cabin which is implanted beyond its vicinity, close to the body of the Odai River that flows to and from the Inner Sea.

It sits undisturbed and unarticulated even today, but as they make for the door, they’re quite rocked at what first slides into their field of view – Maak’s door is subtly ajar. The two cursorily contemplate if he’s quit the house to possibly go fishing or hunting, but that’s preposterous logic. Whatever would compel him to leave the door unlocked in that case?

Jollain flags for Tay to tag her, whilst she ranges to the door and knocks. It’s a hasty one, only preluding the tilting of her head to peek inside. She receives no reply, and along the mental road to call his name, the word catches in her throat.  
It’s the framing in the house which sets dents in either woman to grow dumbstricken – it’s a godsdamned free-for-all. A myriad of the furniture has been pushed to the ground, a modicum of blade cuts line the walls and roof, not to mention arrows and scorch marks.

“What in blazes-…what went down in here?”, utters Tay in dulled tones.

Jollain’s brow sinks and one hand pins the hilt of the Talon.  
“Dunno. Comes off as a helluva fight, though, doesn’t it?”

They bolt into the room, and in Jollain’s mentality, she’s praying desperately to not scout up the image of what she erstwhile saw in a fanciful vision of the Mad God. That wasn’t a separate one of these accursed prophecies, was it?  
But they don’t progress too heavily, for at the first opportunity granted, they tumble upon a profile in the contrary doorway to theirs – a disapproving khajiit in robes, who conjures a fireball into one paw, speaking with a faint accent which can be picked up among those hailing of Elsweyr, despite this one being born in this land.

“Hmm. Haven’t had enough? How atypical – and unintelligent. I will not be-“  
But this figure is within seconds blasted by a bombshell equivalent to theirs, for neither side discovers an enemy, but dear friends. For Jollain and Tay, this is composed of the dark grey-furred visage of Vaziri. She yanks back her hood, and the characteristic half-sliced right ear, the left with an earring, the fur intermittently interjected with white spots and the orange eyes, are laid bare.  
“Tayerise! Jollain! My friends!”

Jollain breaks out into a grin.  
“Vaz!”  
The two of them cull their respective hostilities and hustles to one another, bonding into a tight hug in the middle. This is supervened by a parallel gesture from Tay.  
The bosmer thereafter plants her lips on the khajiit’s cheek and then rests her head at the right shoulder.  
“Vaz, I’m so happy to see you’re okay.”

“Why, so am I. And I had earnestly hoped to meet you two at this island once more, although I must admit to some…confusion. You come at a concurrently opportune and inconvenient event. May I ask what brought you to Balmora now of all times?”

Jollain shoots forth a sigh and adds a shrug to the bargain.  
“It’s…a long story. But it can stand back right now. Could you tell us what this fuss is all about?” She indicates the abuse to the room. “What the fuck is going on?”

Vaziri stalls for a spell to inbreathe cautiously, an attentive presence to her eyes and then she dips her head, motioning with one of her hands.  
“Follow me, please.”

She veers about and strides with patient steps to the corridor she recently parted from and goes across to a door that is deposited upon the farthest end of it. Unclosing it, she relinquishes the aspect of another person they haven’t seen in plenty of moons, and to Jollain’s great relief, he’s not lying in a ditch. Sat at his bed, upper body undressed, although with wounds dressed, and the southern section with plain black pants on - which, in a properly comical fashion is virtually the very image Jollain previously faced with the Grand Spymaster and former Spymaster of Vvardenfell, minus the bandages – is a red-scaled argonian, Jollain’s former trainer, operating Spymaster of the region and her first friend of Morrowind, Maak-Veh.

“Maak! Oh, thank the Divines.”

She doesn’t hesitate as she charges to him and swathes him in her arms in turn. The argonian is left mildly dazed, having clutched a dagger in his claws, not having put it past fate to throw in a second aggression. But now he lays it down to attain the lady that cradles him.  
“J…Jollain? Tayerise? Goodness me, I-…what are you two up to in Vvardenfell for?”

“Hey, I hadn’t figured we’d be sailing down this road either, but here we are. Were you pounced by some bastards as well?”

Maak and Vaziri each interpret the latter of this phrasing.  
“…as well?”

Jollain grazes the rear of her neck.  
“Uh…one thing at a time, eh?”

Tay progresses inside too, clamping her arms encompassing him for a moment and afterwards drawing a chair to sit on.  
“Could you give us a rundown for where we’re standing? Your state of affairs and so on.”

The argonian doesn’t appear overmuch pleased to be tangling his friends inside a disarrangement which they’d anteriorly proclaimed to have no wish to be part of, but even he has to concede that he’s somewhat in over his head.  
“I’ll…try. What we’re shouldering is atypically multifaceted, I’ve come to terms with. But I shall tell you as it is – I had been conducting my ordinary business, overseeing the rhythm of the shadows and laying my directives right through Vvardenfell for the Blades. We’ve been doing our darndest to boost the Legion in maintaining order, but doubling as helpers for the Houses too.”

“I picked up something of a buncha hubbub with the Temple?”

Maak looks…displeased.  
“Mm. This was…an ill-timed consequence of the old Imperator not having the drive to listen to my inputs. I put it out to him that you can’t dragoon the Great Houses nor the Ordinators into submission, for the pair of them are organizations older than the Empire, the preceding one older than the _first_ Empire. But…he was stubborn.”

“Yeah, imperials got that side.”

“At any rate, the circumstances have enhanced in the wake of this, for Morrowind anyway.  
As for me, last week, things took a turn for the worse. My instincts had been priming me to that I was…being stalked. I couldn’t pinpoint the how or the why, and my own agents had failed to notice any unwonted variations. With the political web ongoing, I had my suspicions and so I contacted Vaziri, asking her to join me in Balmora, to engage me in what she’d heard regarding the shadows.” His chest rises as he inhales. “Two days before today, I was returning home from the Balmoran marketplace when I was set upon by a trio of masked sorts. They never said a word prior to swinging their swords and axes. It was an excruciating battle which lasted a good five minutes in the perimeter of the house where I stuck with it, but even supposing I’m loath to admit it, I was losing. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I had, if not for Vaziri landing just in time.”

He bows his head for her where she’s hanging tilted into the wall, her paws in the opposing sleeves.  
“You know I would a thousand times over.” Her eyes flicker with uncertainty. “That said, even with my facilitation, these adversaries were wild, their battle prowess undoubted. One had impressive command of alteration magic.”

Jollain and Tay give one another a knowing look.  
“Did you guys get a fix on a note or slip or a pin…or anything like that?”

Maak is a tad fuddled, but not out of being oblivious. Alternatively, he marks his head at the khajiit, who fishes out a furled parchment.  
“We decidedly did, but I do not understand how you predicted this.”

“I’ll tell you later. Unroll it.”  
Vaziri complies and presents it for their consideration. It is a new note with only a symbol on top.  
But this one contrasts with their own – it portrays a single grey sword, imperial style by what Jollain can tell, with a ruby-colored snake coiling the blade and then an open violet feline eye overlooking. The bosmer looks like she’s up a tree.  
“Uh…what’s that? Can’t put my finger on it.”

This turns out to be a gorky puzzle, for Vaziri shrugs and Maak runs a claw down his facial scales.  
“Mm, sadly, our knowledge banks have been no good either. I can’t categorize the grand total of organizational trademarks in Tamriel, I’m afraid.”

“And I can narrow mine down to at best those in the confines of Morrowind”, utters Vaziri.

Jollain joins her arms below her chest.  
“Huh. Yeah, that’s…a fine kettle of fish.”

Maak then shrugs.  
“But enough about us. I’d like for you to bring your experiences to our attention. There’s an argument for that we could cross-reference them.”

Jollain satisfies his request and lists the evolution at Bal Foyen, and the gravity within. Afterwards, Vaziri strokes a hand down her whiskers, brow wrinkled.  
“It is a matter of course that this is not a coincidence, to me.”

“That makes two of us”, Maak agrees. “A coordinated strike against us both, to take us out, I presume. The question is – why?”

“This note you wrenched from them, may I inspect it?” Jollain sorts her out and collects it from her inner pocket out of her jacket. With the khajiit eyeballing it, in a flash, she glares and hisses, baring her fangs.  
“Oh, _this_ distinctive symbol I am all too aware of…”

“Really?”, asks Jollain. “Care to enlighten us?”

“It is the black mark of the Dark Brotherhood.”

Jollain physically reels.  
“Wh…what?!”

Yet, for Tay’s part, she is relatively fogged.  
“Huh? Dark…Brotherhood? A little bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

Vaziri snorts in a tickled sense, and nods.  
“No question. For all that, I should have known you wouldn’t have caught the name in Morrowind – particularly close to Vvardenfell, they are a hazy circle at best. The Morag Tong owns the industry here.”

“So, they’re…assassins?”

“Feh. They are imbeciles. An offshoot of ours dated to centuries back. To them, the ‘politics’ of legal assassination matters not, and they thirst solely to kill unrestrictedly, and ‘damn the consequences’. Whereas the Morag Tong has been at the service of Morrowind to prevent outright war amongst the Great Houses going back to our founding, the Dark Brotherhood eschews such ‘ideals’ and collects every little assassination contract, with the condition of the payment. You wish to mutilate a guileless child? It will be done. A drunken beggar, a rowdy miner, or a feisty teacher disgruntles you? With the requisite Septims in hand, they will execute whosoever you brand.  
I will not pretend we haven’t hit unworthy targets, but they lack sufficient codes. And this is precisely the justification for them having full-fledged wings of their order purged by local governments, and continuously are unable to rebuild for decades. Over and over they are expunged, reconstructed, propagate, grow too large for their own good, incur the blade which slices off their heads again, and the cycle plods along. Like vermin. They are bloody-minded, short-sighted _amateurs_.”

Jollain smirks at that, finding her friend and old magic trainer’s ideology quite refreshing.  
“Hah. Heard lotsa scary stories ‘bout those murder-spree scumsuckers back in the Imperial City. Never caught anyone call ‘em ‘amateurs’, though. Missed you, Vaz.”  
The khajiit winks slyly.

“So”, says Maak, “the Dark Brotherhood ventured to off you and Tayerise, but those were not my assailants. Or this much is what I’ve gathered, but search me.”

“It would not be against all odds for them to have gone disguised”, argues Vaziri. “When I was more effective in the trade, they made no secret of their affinity for enlisting devious schemes and wanton deception. I would wager the Brotherhood is moderately clever to be tuned as such at that.”

“Then who’s this second party?”, asks Jollain. “And what’s the point of combining their forces with the damn Brotherhood?”

Maak scratches his nose.  
“This is what we must attain proof on.” He thereafter stares at them. “I intended to cast off to it anyhow, with my injuries half-healed, but I say we go in lockstep to rendezvous with a common friend of ours. She’s in Ebonheart.”


	4. New in heaven

It is a grey and hazy sky which greets the quartet and Amnet upon riding into the magnificent city of Ebonheart, the seat of imperial grandeur and authority on Vvardenfell. Jollain peers up at the dreary vault above and inwardly wonders whether this can be predicted throughout their journey. Is it a sign of the local times or an omen that the world sentimentally has sided with her? 

Ebonheart is a socket of Vvardenfell which she and her allies have haunted on more than one occasion in prior days, but it has never inscribed any drawn-out stays. And what’s the point? Even though she wouldn’t file imperials nor the Legion to be her opposition, she will never not feel a tad ill at ease and prickly among imperial soldiers – besides one idiomatic woman. They can’t be said to sit altogether consonant with the Imperial Watch that keep vigil in the capital, but they evoke that sensation and in her capacity as a thief and nondescript extralegal roamer of the streets of the Market District, the Arena District and the Elven Garden District in particular, they were a recurrent sign of trouble, a monument to skirt and slip past at all possible occasions and endeavors. That is, unless you sought to spend the night in a godsdamned cell. Which, granted, Jollain happened to go about at a couple of instances. 

Allowing that the cities of Vvardenfell one and all vary from one another, Ebonheart is indubitably the foremost standout of the bunch, for it isn’t composed of buildings and continuations that assimilate any interior national architecture, corresponding more to that these constructs were in actuality synthesized and settled by outlanders. Other locations of this ilk would be Seyda Neen and Caldera, for instance, bunching out badly from the crowd. This comes down to that it showcases an imperial design – tall, straight castle walls with battlements, intermingled with towers sporting coned roofs, broadly white houses capped by brown sloped ceilings, a whacking port holding a minimum of a dozen ships, a share of them constituting capital ships or dreadnoughts to defend against exterior hazards, which in this light is primarily pirates or previous Camonna smugglers. 

One of the uttermost distinct edifices erected is on a hoisted cliff, composed of statuesque supporting towers, conal or spiraling roofs and reliable footing, the grey-stone castle characterized as the Grand Council Chambers, the facilities of the Duke of Vvardenfell and his leading alliance of Great House identities, who determine the general laws and legislations of Vvardenfell. This renowned hub is sheltered in an anterior position by the Hawkmoth Garrison, the Imperial Legion’s paramount station in this city – and possibly throughout Vvardenfell.  
The bulk of this port, along the walls, roofs, upon the windows of the Grand Council’s complex, bounding the harbor and dangling from base poles, are red and black dragon standards of the Septim Empire. 

Short of these factors, what one is first caught by upon ingressing the city, going by the portcullis and beneath the heightened barriers, is a front known as Dragon Square. Mounted in the midpoint of the plaza is a mark sculpted and ascended, a gigantic bronze statue of a dragon curling into itself and spreading its wings. Jollain has viewed it at a sliver of times at this rate, but she detects an abnormal soul of…conjoined fear and belonging in beholding it. She is not a fan of the Empire’s spread and sovereignty in general terms, but dragons, they are…free. Undaunted, unbroken. She can prize that symbol, that strength. She sometimes wishes that dragons still existed, so that she could hang out with one, such as the legends tell. And she’s not just claiming this in light of the whole ‘Dragonborn’ aspect of the prophecy. 

Overlapping their entry, they aren’t soundly overlooked either. The notion of the Nerevarine is not analogously venerated amidst imperials or other foreigners, as akin to the dunmer faithful or collateral locals, but she _is_ thought highly of by them for the feats in opposing a foe no one had estimated could be trounced, for not simply standing with the Legion in the grandest battle within Vvardenfell in a thousand years, but _presiding over it_ as well. Though not an object of glorification for the soldiers, she has certainly progressed to the status of a legend. 

It’s this that’s the gist of the greeting and saluting she’s granted around the moment where they present themselves. Not the least Jollain’s reputation tarries strong and ferocious with the legionnaires. None has scratched the speech she gave at the foot of the Red Mountain, or the propagation of it.  
Guided through the town by a minor soldier escort, they are brought up to the rise of the castle, and turning about, they get a prospect not solely of Ebonheart alone, but a couple of miles north of the Ascadian Isles. 

Barely to the east, beyond a body of water that is merely a pinch of the Inner Sea, they can spot the cantons of Vivec City, monolithic clumps of swimming structures with manifold population, intact in its determination and turning, in spite of the absence of its namesake.  
To the west, the gloomy Bitter Coast, which heralded as her home. Internally, she slightly longs to look up good old Balmora, take in the streets, drink in the smell of the food oozing from the South Wall cornerclub, the sweaty miners coming back from their positions, hear of some brawl between the Thieves Guild and the Hlaalu Guard. Good times, which sadly were never bound to endure. 

And staring upwards, commanding the world that they bunker in, is the ever-smoking tip of the Red Mountain, a giant in the company of ants. The protector and overlord; safety and horror. Heeding it, Jollain’s sentiment is stirred, moved by the inference that she once stood at its basis and wondered at the historical figures which had at one point lingered there. But now, back at the rim of where she was carried into Morrowind a scant amount of years prior, she wonders – will people in the years ahead get into a corresponding prospect with her? Look dreamily at the cusp and probe themselves what Jollain, the hallowed Nerevarine, mulled over at that spot? It kinda…makes her a little queasy to take stock of it. She doesn’t like to be a legend, a story spun by other people…but the moment for regrets is far gone.

Borne into the grey stone halls of the castle, with its arched walkways, elemental black candle-lit chandeliers, dragon icons upon large wall-hanging cloth, and wooden benches at the extremities, they arrive into a demarcated room, a cloistered chamber where two people are sat and discussing some manner of contemporary affair, and the puzzles they’ve got to contend with confederately. This is the second that the door shoots ajar and they’re granted a vision of a younger imperial man who salutes them. 

“Duke Dren, my lord, you have visitors – the esteemed Nerevarine and her entourage.”

Duke Vedam Dren, a graceful and handsome middle-aged dunmer with a thready scarlet gaze, darker grey skin tone, lengthened black hair in a high but short ponytail, mouth verged by a talentedly trimmed beard and his figure in a black and red attire including a scarf tied to a doublet, velvety breeches and court shoes, glances at him with vivid surprise.  
“Wha-…the Nerevarine?! Here, in Vvardenfell? Goodness me. Well, by the Divines, show her in this instant!” 

He rises and smooths his top. In seconds, Jollain drops by, an attached wide and pleasant smile compassed towards him for starters. She hasn’t proved the greatest of his fans, but he has treated her and her people right, all things considered, which she can’t flout. Even though she would cite that he himself was rather languid in grabbing the bull named Camonna by the horns. In the end, his hand was forced, for reasons of his brother standing as its kingpin – the bastard that Tayerise herself broke apart. 

“Nerevarine! My lady.” Putting a hand to his chest, he unaffectedly bows for her. “A pleasure and an honor, as ever! How I have missed to receive the convenience of your visit.”

“Duke Dren, it’s good to see you as well.” 

But her eyes are not solely directed towards him, but at the personage who rears from a chair to his left. Feasibly, she’s an even further household face to Jollain’s complete team. For the bosmer subjectively, this lady was the very presence which she encountered and conversed with when she sailed in on a ship to Vvardenfell approximately…what is it now? Four years? Four years of turmoil, struggling, adventuring and personal growth.

And here she is once more, albeit it tracks that she’s portraying signs of age. Sliding up from her chair is a woman of short black and fairly greying hair – shows every cue of getting recently cut, as it’s now not proceeding to her shoulders – dark green eyes as the center of an emerald, and medium brown hide. She’s half a mammoth, a height that transcends Tayerise’s besides, likely in light of her genes from the old nedes, aside from that a mass of groups would assume that she’s redguard. A flaw in how Tamriel elects to categorize its people and their strict ‘racial boundaries’, perhaps.  
Unrelated to the opposite instants where these two have bumped into each other, the black ebony armor she wields is not only supplemented by gold slices and red cloth, but parallel logos on her chest, marks of distinction. Honors and premiums she’s won in her long, _long_ service to the Imperial Legion. 

Jollain stops smack-dab in the heart of the room, prior to reaching the duo and crosses her arms as she gloms this lady, one who looks at her with a compound of shock and…expectation? There is a pregnant and tipped silence between them for a few seconds, until the nord is the first to shatter it, with a snort.  
“Godsdammit. Should’ve realized you’d turn up somehow. The full-blown island is turning upside down in the byproduct of needless conflict when you bugged out, and now that it’s remotely crawling back up again to breathe, here you are.”

Some might imply that this is woven with a tad hallmark of hostility, but Jollain can catch the circumference of affection inside, which drives her to laugh, a gentle mellifluent sound.  
“Hah! I’ve missed you too, mom.”  
Asta Svalen breathes out and shakes her head, although she can’t obscure the tenuous smile as the bosmer sprints to and embraces her.  
“C’mooon, say it now. Say you feel the same. Don’t be the tough bastards in front of this guy. We both know you can’t crack it.”

Asta rolls her eyes and implants a hand onto Jollain’s hair and ruffles it.  
“And you’ve stayed a little shit to this day, I see.”

Jollain grins animatedly.  
“Was gonna say nothing ever changes, but…” She taps the special dragon symbol embedded in the upper torso of her armor, one that is as night and day from the national one – it is a minute dragon with wings unfurled.  
“So, Maak had it right, huh? You’re the new Imperator?”

Imperial Thirteenth Legion Imperator of Vvardenfell, Asta Svalen, bursts forth a sigh and rubs her own nose.  
“Yeah, has the quality of that, doesn’t it? The brass back in the capital couldn’t dig up anyone more qualified or utterly asinine enough to accept the role.” 

Jollain laughs heartily, more brazen than earlier.  
“So, what transpired? What led to this scene we’ve got at hand?”

Asta grimaces.  
“Well, to be honest, a real shitfest of exasperating rot and dumbass actions, which if I had my druthers, would’ve never materialized to start with. The old imperator staged a true fuck-up, and has since ‘retired’. Maak-Veh and I instructed him in the span of it _not_ to take sides. For me, this was fueled by the fact that I’d had longer experience with Morrowind and the Great Houses than him. But imperials have an affinity to be…haughty.”  
Jollain turns a grin at that. 

Vedam chooses to complement it.  
“It was a positively fiendish and charged concern those days, and the genuine Emperor himself dispatched a communiqué to Ebonheart, announcing the promotion of Asta by counsel of the predecessor and multiple additional officers.”

The nord jacks her shoulders for a second.  
“Wouldn’t put it past hoary Caius to have had a hand in it too.”

“But it was Imperator Svalen here who tempered our ongoing status by miles, especially by dint of that she had the perception, eye and vacancy of desire to forestall local affairs. I am exceedingly grateful for the nomination, for it bodes well for Vvardenfell.”

Asta scratches her neck, a nudge discomfited at such laud, and then coughs.  
“I…was simply happy to have done my part to assert the restoration of the peace, and that the dunmer stick to being in charge.” She then peers at Vedam. “I’m not oblivious to that, as an occupation, imperial rule might not…emit an overtly favorable picture, but so long as this is my administration, the _Legion_ at minimum will act to boost and defend, not impose ourselves on your throats.”  
Vedam raises the hem of his lips and bows in appreciativeness. 

Afterwards, Asta takes the time to greet the gang, shaking Maak’s and Vaziri’s hands, albeit with Tay, she rests her fingers onto the dunmer’s shoulder, dipping her head at Tay, and with comprehension, Tay recalls it with a smile. This duo has divided an alignment of fondness and shelter for Jollain. Such as, some could attest, a mother addressing a daughter-in-law. 

“We temporarily eavesdropped on a little something before stepping in”, says Jollain. “You two were schmoozing on some shape of jeopardy that’s harassing the isle?”

The Imperator lowers her head.  
“Yeah, it’s the bottom line of me checking into this chamber. Without Moonmoth in my hands, seeing as I gotta be in this city, I lead Hawkmoth. Regardless, we were picking our brains on a dose of activity out at sea – reports anywhere in the continent has signaled that the Tenth Dusk has resurfaced and is on the move once more. You’ve memorized them, I take it?”

Jollain smiles mistily, and slides her arms together, eyeing the floor thoughtfully.  
“Hah, how could I forget? That was a patch ago now, wasn’t it? Ahead of this full prophecy garbage…”

“There aren’t any firm evidence, as infiltration into the association is frequently sparse and difficult to solidify, but it’s presumed they’re moreover making forays into Morrowind and might need to be fared with.  
And you recall your ‘acquaintance’, Ferhani?”

“Uh-huh. She’s not…like, a corpse now, is she?”

“Oh, no no, there’s no room for that. She’s been marked as one of the district chiefs of the Dusk.”

Jollain glooms tentatively.  
“…is that bad?”

“Well, for the fact that limited proportions of the populace term them as terrorists, it can come to that, yes. For the time being, however, the Legion and I are merely overseeing the progress, estimating whether there has to be an aspect of containment mustered. I would love nothing better than eschewing conflict, but…”

Awakened to the necessity, and holding a hankering for it, Jollain swaps matters.  
“My buddies and I have arrived in somewhat of a pinch, by the by. It’d be nice if you could take some of the heat off.”

“Alright, hit me.”

“The Dark Brotherhood tried to assassinate me and Tay.”

And so it is that the ground practically appears to quake beneath their feet, as they’re appropriately shocked to physically reel.  
“…excuse me?”

“The…The Dark Brotherhood?”, Vedam exclaims. “Those villains?!”

“What unfolded before this? Tell us everything.”

Jollain inclines her face and tunes to it, supplying them with the tale and the note she pulled out. In the impending occasion, Maak reproduces his own and delineating the interaction with a separate team. Vedam is then blowing in a stupor.  
“How in the-…they-…the temerity!”

Asta is a little serener and fuses her arms, staring at the ground with a glare.  
“The Dark Brotherhood doesn’t under regular circumstances operate in Morrowind…”

She’s provided commentary from Vaziri.  
“Unless outside outlets create a supply line of worth, to strike something within.”

“Yeah…guess you’d know as to that better than me.”

Vedam is distraught.  
“But…but we can’t simply sit here and abide! W-we…we must act on this! Circulate patrols at this instant!”

Asta levels a shrug proceeding for him.  
“Against whom? Though I’m not an expert, I am up-to-date they rarely deal their blades in an area with a shortage of funding and intent, like Vaziri hinted. Someone hired them.” She glances at Jollain. “Guessing you don’t got an inside line on this.”

Jollain’s head jerks with denial.  
“That’s why we came your way. Like, not to ask if you’ve got a clue who’d be keen to pop me off, but…concerning a piece we found. Maak, show ‘em.”

The argonian tips his head and approaches.  
“Whereas the paper they extracted was of the Brotherhood’s black hand, mine is personified by a component further…distinct. Never seen any of its variety prior to today. But perhaps you two can give us something to work with.”

Vedam stares at the extraordinary logo and shrugs haplessly.  
“I’m afraid I can be of little assistance. I am synonymously clueless, my friends. Never beheld it before.”

But Asta on the other hand, frowns.  
“Hmm. Well, I can verify that I recognize it.”

Jollain blinks raddledly.  
“Wait, you do?”

Maak nods mildly.  
“I had a feeling…”

The Imperator rubs and pinches her lower lip.  
“Yeah…that’s the mark of the Seventh Legion.”

At this, Jollain angles her head a couple of degrees to the left.  
“…huh? The what?”

Maak furrows his forehead, as an intuition torrents into him and he wraps one hand around his chest.  
“Special forces in the Imperial Legion.”

“That’s a fact”, Asta responds. “The Emperor carries his personal agents to observe chosen targets in Tamriel – The Order of Blades – but the Seventh Legion is a type of…undercover strike force. Their mission is to make quick work of heavier afflictions which plague the realm before they grow into a big threat. Not with information, but force.  
This crest you glean here”, she holds her hand out and traces the lines, “the imperial sword represents the Empire’s might and armor. The snake is suggestive of the akaviri who is regarded as the founder of the enterprise in the morning of the Second Era, the comprehensively referenced ‘tsaesci’, a serpentine people. The feline eye is for its first Legate, the legendary khajiit tactician called Shomazi, whose designs ended two wars before she turned 30.”

Vaziri dips her head reversely and snorts.  
“Shomazi? Hah, what an amusing coincidence. Interestingly, I read a treatise on her, taken out of the Telvanni library. She’s somewhat of a pride in Elsweyr and other sections of the khajiiti diaspora.”

Jollain seems cheered by that.  
“You…really know your history, mom.”

“I _did_ go through the Legion officer academy a good twenty years past. A basal education of Tamriel’s history is embedded in that.”

“A snake people, though? Is that right?”

Asta cants herself onto the rim of the chair, one hand laid by her hip.  
“Yeah, they hail from Akavir, the continent to our east.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m looped in on the geography, but…huh. Are they some class of…relatives to the argonians?”

“I’ll be frank – no one’s really sure. There used to be akaviri living in Cyrodiil somewhere as of the First and Second Era, following their defeat in the war versus the Second Empire in the First. They served Reman Cyrodiil III. When he kicked the bucket, they pushed ahead to grip Tamriel by proxy for north of four hundred years, as potentates. That’s the same era they buoyed the figures who modeled the Blades, but in those days, they were known as the ‘Dragonguard’. Some have insinuated they were an eastern version of humans, but the bets are off. Primarily since no humans that have at any point been met have sustained themselves for such a lifespan, scarcely even mages. And plenty have stressed or intimated their ‘serpentine’ characteristics.”

“Insinuated? Stressed? Intimated? How the fuck can no one not have facts on this?”

Asta exhales with a mite of disesteem.  
“That’s in no small measure cuz no akaviri yet _exists_ in Tamriel, to our knowledge. Again, as determined by the accounts, they were decently suspicious of Tamriel’s inhabitants and chose to reside in privacy. But this comes in several parts, accredited to that this was in advance of the ‘Interregnum’ – centuries of bloody wars and conflicts that stirred at the demise of the Second Empire. It tore asunder a great deal of our written history. This era didn’t have its swan song till Tiber Septim’s subjection of Tamriel, resetting the clock. We can quibble until the guar come home as far as the fairness and justice of their rule is concerned, but each Empire has brought stability to Tamriel.”

Jollain is outwardly quite archly put out by this last portion.  
“Yeah, on _their_ terms.”

“That’s…fair, but-“

“And if the Empires are so fucking swell, how come they crack every godsdamned time? Tamriel honestly has to track another way forward, together.”

“…admittedly, yes.”

Unobstructing his throat with a cough to wedge a fresh opinion into the matter and twist them obversely to where this kicked off, Vedam glances at each of Jollain and Asta.  
“But for what unsavory causes would they hire these ill-intentioned assassins to murder the Nerevarine, the hero of Vvardenfell? She isn’t one bit of a political entity in our nation any longer.”

Asta scuffs her jawline and purses her brow.  
“That’s…beyond my depth. Could be that this note was planted.”

Jollain scowls right back at her and interweaves her arms in defiance.  
“Or ol’ Uriel is hedging his bets to get rid of me as things stand, that I’ve served my purpose.”

A ferocious and unthinkable statement…which brings an all quiet to the room for want of a permissible response. The only people not mildly offended are Tay, who couldn’t give less of a damn for some faded monarch, and Vaziri, who twiddles her whiskers, amused.  
Ultimately, Asta sighs and shrugs.  
“At any rate, I got contacts among the Seventh, over in Mournhold. As it happens, I was planning to make a trip that way in a couple of days. Seeing as you’re passionate to reconcile this mystery, you’re free to join me and I can introduce you.”

Jollain soothes herself with this, knowing and bearing a security towards the legionnaire she’s conferring with at this second, at least.  
“Yeah, got reason to believe this’d be the one route we got in play in the present. Appreciate it, mom.”

Vedam aligns at her.  
“House Hlaalu would be honored to donate a ship and crew to the mainland, lady Nerevarine.”

“Oh. Uh, well, I…I dunno.”

Asta shakes her head and pulls up to her whole height.  
“We’ll thank you for the ship, my lord, but my selective soldiers are in the fort. Think we can cover her good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _If it interests anyone, for inspiration of the ambience of writing this fic, I've mainly listened to the Assassin's Creed 2 soundtrack - particularly the tracks Ezio's Family, Approaching Target (1+2+3), Venice Fight, Tour of Venice, Dream of Venice, and The Madame (which is Delja's theme, who arrives later). Not that AC 2 and Morrowind has much in common, but I like the mysterious and dreamy feel of these songs_


End file.
